• Ciroos builds AI agents that act as site reliability teammates to find and fix software errors.
• The startup just launched from stealth with $21 million in seed funding from Energy Impact Partners.
• Business Insider got an exclusive look at the pitch deck Ciroos used to raise its seed round.

A team of enterprise tech veterans just raised $21 million to introduce an AI fix to some of the most painful software engineering problems: middle-of-the-night outages and other critical system failures that require immediate attention.

Ciroos, a new startup founded by former Cisco, Amazon Web Services, and Gigamon executives, just launched from stealth with its seed funding round, led by Energy Impact Partners.

Headquartered in Pleasanton, California, Ciroos builds AI agents that act as site reliability engineering (SRE) teammates. Traditionally, it can take a long time and many people to keep software systems running — and to find a fix when something breaks. When a website breaks down overnight or during a holiday weekend, it's up to a team of unlucky, on-call engineers in triage mode to find a fix as quickly as possible.

Ciroos's agents work alongside a company's operations team to detect problems before a human is officially alerted, identify the root cause, and either fix them autonomously or help their human teammates fix them faster.

Considering that the median size of a seed funding round in the first half of 2024 was just $1.3 million, per Crunchbase data, Ciroos's $21 million round is staggering in comparison. The startup's CEO, Ronak Desai, told Business Insider that he and his co-founders connected with investors who agreed that enterprise operations needed a new approach, which AI agents could achieve.

"We saw deep curiosity from investors on the customer anecdotes we shared, and everybody noted our focus on cross-domain correlation as our point of differentiation," he said. "Investors also readily recognized our execution track record, our relentless customer focus, and the deep experience we had assembled — all necessary ingredients to build enterprise-class products."

Desai said that with its funding round completed, Ciroos will focus on hiring: the startup plans to staff up with AI engineers, full-stack engineers, and salespeople in the San Francisco Bay Area and India.

AI agents are booming in 2025, and Ciroos faces stiff competition from a multitude of enterprise tech startups that build AI teammates to help software and computer engineers. In May, no-code AI agent startup StackAI announced it raised $16 million from Lobby VC, and in April, AI debugging agent startup Spur announced it raised $4.5 million from First Round Capital and Pear.

Other startups offer general AI agents that can complete a variety of workplace tasks, including those traditionally handled by software and computer engineering teams. For example, the startup Artisan announced it raised $25 million in April, and Coworker announced a $13 million round in May.

Here's an exclusive look at the 11-slide pitch deck Ciroos used to raise $21 million in seed funding.

• Harvey committed $150 million to Azure cloud services over two years.
• The startup, which builds software for lawyers, has partnered with Microsoft since at least 2024.
• Harvey's expansion includes clients like Comcast and Verizon, and new foundation model integrations.

Legaltech startup Harvey has agreed to a two-year, $150 million commitment to use Azure cloud services, according to an internal email seen by Business Insider.

Jay Parikh, who leads Microsoft's new CoreAI unit, included the deal in an internal memo, writing that his unit "announced expanded partnership with Harvey Al with a 2-year $150M MACC and $3.5M unified expansion." Parikh joined Microsoft in October to lead a new engineering group responsible for building its artificial-intelligence tools.

Microsoft declined to comment, and Harvey declined to comment on the agreement.

MACC, or Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment, is an agreement customers make to spend a specific amount on Azure for a period of time, often for a discount.

Harvey, which builds chatbots and agents tailored for legal and professional services, is scaling up and entering the enterprise market. It's adding legal teams at Comcast and Verizon as clients, while developing bespoke workflow software for large law firm customers.

It has raised more than $500 million from investors, including Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and OpenAI Startup Fund, a Harvey spokesperson told BI.

Harvey has closely partnered with Microsoft since at least early 2024. That year, the company deployed its platform on Microsoft Azure, followed by a Word plug-in designed for lawyers. It also introduced a SharePoint integration, allowing users to securely access files from their Microsoft storage system through Harvey's apps.

For years, Harvey, founded in 2022, ran its platform on OpenAI models, primarily because they're hosted in Microsoft's data centers, Harvey CEO Winston Weinberg told BI last month. Law firms handle highly sensitive information and trusted Microsoft to keep it safe, Weinberg said.

"Law firms refused to use anything that wasn't through Azure," Weinberg said. That's now changing, he said, as vendors like Anthropic build the features enterprises require.

Last week, Harvey expanded its use of foundation models to Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude.

Still, Harvey's $150 million Azure deal signals it's not backing away from Microsoft anytime soon. The company's growing cloud footprint suggests that, while other partners are gaining traction with the legaltech start, Azure remains integral to Harvey's growth for now.

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• Amazon Web Services recently issued guidance to staff on tariffs and data sovereignty concerns.
• AWS aims to reassure customers amid uncertainty over tariffs and other geopolitical issues.
• Amazon previously hinted that third-party sellers might raise prices on its site due to tariffs.

As tariffs spark growing uncertainty across Amazon's retail operations, the company's cloud division is quietly moving to head off similar concerns from business customers.

According to an internal document obtained by Business Insider, Amazon Web Services has issued new guidance to frontline sales and technical staff, instructing them on how to respond to customer questions about tariffs, data sovereignty, and potential restrictions tied to US government policy.

Among the talking points: If an AWS customer asks about possible price increases due to tariffs, employees are told to avoid direct answers and instead reaffirm pricing terms for those covered under existing Private Pricing Agreements (PPAs).

"In the event that AWS does increase prices, these increases will not change any agreed upon discounts, credits or service-specific rates in your PPA," the internal document stated.

While AWS may be less directly impacted by tariffs than Amazon's e-commerce business, the document reveals the company is concerned enough to prep staff with answers to potential tough customer questions.

The document covers questions ranging from potential price hikes and data-privacy concerns. It even broaches the possibility that US President Donald Trump might ban foreign companies from using AWS.

In a recent CNBC interview, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy acknowledged the situation remains fluid and emphasized efforts by the company's e-commerce business to keep consumer prices low. Still, he hinted that some third-party sellers might raise prices in response to tariffs. He also noted that, despite the uncertainty, Amazon continues its data center expansion.

Amazon, whose stock has dropped about 15% this year, is set to report first-quarter earnings on Thursday.

A spokesperson for the company referred BI to a statement from the internal document:

"We're closely monitoring the situation, and we are working to assess the impact on our business. As we navigate the evolving trade policy landscape, our focus remains on delivering value to our customers and innovating on their behalf."

Do not 'speculate'

Tariff-driven price hikes have already become a flashpoint in Amazon's retail division.

As BI previously reported, internal teams have struggled with forecasting, and vendors say Amazon has offered cost relief in exchange for strict margin guarantees. Meanwhile, third-party sellers say they're being forced to raise prices due to rising import costs.

What this means for AWS pricing remains unclear. Internal guidance tells employees not to "speculate," citing the rapidly evolving nature of trade policy.

Some cloud industry experts suggest tariffs could squeeze AWS more than the company lets on.

AWS relies heavily on high-end computing gear, much of it manufactured in China or Taiwan. While some semiconductor components were recently exempted from tariffs, other critical data center parts may still be affected. Trump has paused most new tariffs for 90 days, but a 145% tariff on Chinese goods remains in effect.

"AWS and other hyperscalers could choose to absorb the cost or pass it on to customers," said Travis Rehl, CTO of cloud consultancy Innovative Solutions. "I'm unsure which direction they'd take."

Ben Schaechter, CEO of cloud cost optimization firm Vantage, said tariffs could force AWS to tighten future discounts or slow infrastructure growth due to higher hardware costs.

The bigger threat, some say, is reduced cloud spending.

Randall Hunt, CTO of cloud advisory firm Caylent, told BI that customers are already cutting back in broad spending in anticipation of slower growth and rising costs.

Data sovereignty and Trump-era fears

The growing uncertainty over Trump's actions has pushed Amazon to prepare for even more extreme scenarios, including potential US government demands for cloud customer data or a move to block non-US users from accessing AWS.

Those concerns over privacy and data access have grown recently as Trump's tariff-driven trade war increased tensions between the US and European countries.

If asked about potential US government data requests, Amazon instructed employees to emphasize that AWS does not disclose customer information unless legally required and that all requests are thoroughly reviewed.

The guidance also clarifies AWS's position on the CLOUD Act, or Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act. The CLOUD Act, passed in 2018, gives US law enforcement agencies the authority to access data held by US-based companies, even if stored abroad.

AWS has not provided enterprise or government customer data stored outside the US since at least 2020 and it will challenge any "over-broad" or unlawful requests, the document stated.

"The CLOUD Act does not provide the U.S. government with unfettered access to data held by cloud providers," the document added.

On the question of whether Trump could block foreign access to AWS, the document stops short of addressing whether the president has the authority, but notes there's no indication such action is imminent.

In fact, it argues that doing so would contradict the administration's stated goal of supporting US tech companies abroad.

"AWS is closely plugged into US policy and this Administration's efforts, and can confirm we have heard nothing about restricting cloud services to non-US customers in response to addressing trade imbalances or unfair trade barriers, and expect their focus to continue to be on tariffs as the 'rebalancing' mechanism," the document said.

Sanctions and 'Buy Canada'

AWS also addresses fears that US sanctions could restrict access to its services in certain countries. The guidance notes that full country-wide sanctions are rare and that in the past, companies have been given time to wind down operations when sanctions do occur.

"US country-wide sanctions or services restrictions are exceedingly rare," the document said. "But in the theoretical case that such sanctions ever came to pass, AWS would do everything practically possible to provide continuity of service."

Finally, AWS is preparing for patriotic backlash in some markets, such as a potential "Buy Canada" movement. Employees are told to clarify that AWS's Canada office is a registered Canadian corporation headquartered in Toronto, and that customers can choose to store their data locally and encrypt it.

Still, the guidance urges caution. Employees should be careful framing AWS as a "Canadian business," given the complexity of the term.

"Whether AWS is a 'Canadian business' will depend on how that is defined in particular circumstances," the document concludes.

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